IMPLEMENTING AND UP-DATING
THE
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD CLASSIFICATIONS OF OCCUPATIONS:
ISSUES, EXPERIENCES AND POSSIBILITIES

by Eivind Hoffmann

Introduction

In principle
the work to revise the 1968 version of the International Standard Classification
of Occupations (ISCO) was completed when the Governing Body of the International
Labour Organisation in February 1988 approved the Report from the 14th International
Conference of Labour Statisticians which in November 1987 had adopted a Resolution
providing a revised structure for ISCO (designated ISCO-88). However, an examination
of the 2000 edition of the Yearbook of Labour Statistics reveals that only
for 49 countries and territories are the latest available statistics on employment
presented according to ISCO-88 major groups, while the presentation is according
to the major groups of ISCO-68 for 27 countries (the corresponding numbers
for ISIC, rev. 3 and rev. 2 are 53 and 33 respectively) . The first part of
this note will present and discuss the implementation process which has led
to this result after a 10 year period.

When advising
custodians of national standard classifications of occupations the ILO has
always emphasized the need to have a continuous programme for up-dating the
classification. The contrast between this message and the very limited amount
of up-dating which the ILO and its Bureau of Statistics have done for ISCO-88
is therefore a bit embarrassing. The second part of this note will present
how we hope to rectify this situation, within the limited resources that will
be available for such work.

Implementing ISCO-88

First we
need to agree on what we mean by "implementing an international statistical
classification": Implicit in the above description of the situation for
statistics presented in the Yearbook of Labour Statistics is the notion that
'implementation' means that relevant statistics are available to users according
to the classification. This will also be the point of departure for the following
discussion, which will focus on two issues: the process of implementation
and the quality of the resulting statistics.

The 'implementation' of ISCO-88 in national statistical programmes

There are
two stages to a national 'implementation' of an international statistical
classification: (a) The creation of the necessary tools, e.g. a national translation
or adaptation of the international classification, or cross-walks to it from
the corresponding national classification; and (b) the application of those
tools for the production of national statistics. For the first of these stages
there are three strategies which a national statistical organisation can use.
Listed in order of complexity and resource requirements they can be designated
'adoption', 'mapping' and 'adaptation': For the last two it is necessary to
distinguish between (i) the creation of the national instrument and (ii) the
application of that instrument to the relevant statistical data sources, while
for the first strategy only (ii) is involved.

From the
fact that from the 1990 round of population censuses about 115 countries reported
that 'occupation' was an included variable (see ILO, 1996), even if only a
few categories are distinguished, we have guesstimated that about 130 countries
now are using an occupational classification, at least in this sense. We must
assume that in the majority of cases these classifications represent adoptions
of ISCO-88 or an earlier ISCO version, even if the ILO has never recommended
that national statistical offices (NSOs) or employment services (ESs) should
use this strategy for developing a national standard occupational classification
(NSOC). However, we do recognize that to do so may be the only realistic option
for those NSOs/ESs that do not already have a NSOC and/or do not have the
necessary resources to develop one. That the occupational classification used
by a NSO or ES should be able to reflect circumstances and requirements of
the national labour markets has always been seen by the ILO as its primary
objective. Ease of providing internationally 'comparable' statistics should
always be a second order consideration.

If and when
the NSO or ES has a NSOC with which they and their clients are reasonably
satisfied and/or comparability over time is an important quality concern for
national users of the relevant statistics, then the appearance of a revised
international classification will not in itself be a strong argument for modifying
the corresponding national classification. In that case mapping from the national
classification to a revised international classification may be the preferred
strategy for 'implementing' the latter for the purposes of international reporting
of statistics. Such mapping will most frequently be needed for statistics
which are already available according to a particular set of categories in
the national classification, and Hoffmann, 1994 provides advice on the mapping
from a NSOC to e.g. ISCO-88.

Because the
creation of the necessary 'cross-walks' between a NSOC and e.g. ISCO-88 requires
a good understanding of both classifications as well as of the structure of
the national labour market the ILO has offered to review and advise on draft
cross-walks to ISCO-88 prepared by NSOs. However, there have been very few
such requests.

It is interesting
that ILO has received many more requests for advice concerning the adaptation
of ISCO-88 to develop a NSOC based on this model than for mapping to ISCO-88,
although adaptation is normally the most resource demanding strategy for implementing
the international classification in a national context. Thus the adoption
of the adaptation strategy reflected a need for a (new) NSOC as well as the
convenience of using ISCO-88 as a model and point of departure. It may even
be seen as a recognition of its qualities.

The support
provided by the ILO has taken various forms: It proved impossible to produce
the promised Manual on how to develop and use NSOCs, but the effort resulted
in some hopefully relevant and useful documents, see e.g. Embury et al, 1997,
Hoffmann, 1994 and Hoffmann et al, 1995. There have been direct contacts with
the relevant authorities in about 55 countries and territories which have
developed, or have been in the process of developing, a NSOC using ISCO-88
as a model or the same principles. (There have also been contacts with the
authorities in nine countries where it has been decided to use another model
when revising the national classification, usually that of the previous one.)

Advisory
visits have been made to about 20 countries and officials from three countries
visited the ILO . National and regional training seminars have been organized
for China, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan and Thailand as well as for CIS member states,
South East Asian countries and South Pacific countries . Countries where a
national classification based on ISCO-88 has been developed with the assistance
of an ILO sponsored or back-stopped resident expert include Trinidad &
Tobago, Tanzania, Namibia, Mauritius and Fiji.

As custodian
of ISCO-88 ILO has also provided advice for three efforts to develop common
regional classifications based on ISCO-88: (i) ISCO-88(COM), developed for
Eurostat and the
European Union by the Institute of Employment Research (IER) of the University
of Warwick (United Kingdom); (ii) ISCO-88(CIS) developed for the Statistical
Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS STAT) and (iii) ISCO-88(OCWM)
developed for the ILO/UNDP Asian Regional Programme on International Labour
Migration.

As part of
and in direct continuation of its work with ISCO-88(COM) IER has also provided
advisory services to the statistical authorities in both member countries
of the European Economic Area (EEA) as well as countries in central and eastern
Europe receiving support from the PHARE programme. IER has also organized
regional seminars for officials from the statistical offices in the two groups
of countries, two and six respectively. Thus IER represents a second international
centre of competence for work on occupational classifications, and the six
seminars organized for PHARE countries represent the only sustained activity
of cooperation and exchange of information between officials in a group of
countries on methodological problems and results in this subject matter area.

In the period
from mid-1984 to end-1988 the ILO allocated about 2 work-years (wy) per year
to work with statistical classifications, mostly to the development and finalization
of ISCO-88. Since then about one wy per year has been allocated to work with
classifications, including the support for the 'implementation' of ISCO-88
in national statistical programmes described above. Based on the experience
that the availability of various forms of statistics tend to generate demand
for them it is tempting to assume that more ILO resources dedicated to this
work would have resulted in faster and/or wider implementation of ISCO-88,
although the process has been demand-driven and virtually all requests for
support have been given a positive response. However, with more resources
this work could have been made more visible, to more NSOs and ESs as well
as to economic and social researchers and private sector users of internationally
comparable occupational information, such as private recruitment agencies
and multi-national companies. From time-to-time we observe the use of ISCO-88
by such users, but we have no mechanisms for observing this in a systematic
manner.

Quality issues

One of the
stated objectives of ISCO-88 is to facilitate communication about occupations
by supplying national statisticians with a tool to make national data available
internationally in a manner which will help make them comparable with those
of other countries. However, that ISCO-88 has been 'implemented' as described
above will not be sufficient to ensure that national occupational statistics
in fact will be comparable to a degree which is satisfactory to the users
of such statistics. One reason for this is that the degree of comparability
will depend on a larger number of factors which are not related to the occupational
classification used, such as the methods of data collection, the units being
observed, the definitions used to delineate the populations observed etc.
These factors will not be discussed here. However, there are also some reasons
which are directly related to the 'implementation strategy' used and to the
manner in which it has been used.

With the
adoption strategy the main concern may be the extent to which the use of a
classification which is not adapted to the local circumstances may result
in the 'forced' assignment of a significant number of observations to categories
which were not designed with such situations in mind. The seriousness of this
problem is a function of the clarity of the principles used to define the
distinctions between the categories of the international classification and
the extent to which these principles are general enough to cover all the situations
encountered. 'Flexible' criteria for distinctions which leave decisions to
the subjective judgements will of course undermine the possibility for having
comparable statistics, even if the procedures used to apply the classification
in the respective surveys, censuses or administrative recordings are satisfactory.
So far we have not seen any systematic evaluation of the extent to which the
conceptual basis for ISCO-88 and the definitional descriptions it provides
can be said to be satisfactory in this respect. An interesting issue will
be whether improvements in this respect should be regarded as maintenance
and up-dating of the classification or as revisions.

Mapping is the 'implementation' strategy which should lead to the most serious
quality concerns: One reason for this is a lack of transparency about the
procedures used to establish the necessary 'cross-walks', and in particular
about the principles used to allocate or distribute categories, e.g. from
a NSOC to ISCO-88, which contains elements which should be classified to more
than one category in the target classification. Another reason is the frequent
practice of mapping only to highly aggregate categories in the target classification,
leaving undocumented the good correspondence which may exist between many
individual detailed categories in the two classifications. The fact that NSOs
do not consult with ILO when mapping from their NSOC to ISCO-88 means that
we have virtually no knowledge about how serious the problems of comparability
are e.g. for the statistics on employment illustrated by the annexed examples,
but we suspect that they are serious even at these aggregate levels, and frequently
underestimated by the users of these statistics. One indication of this is
the results of the limited examination of the comparability of occupational
statistics on employment from the European Labour Force Survey undertaken
at the IER and summarized in Elias, 1997.

From a comparability
perspective the quality problems associated with the adaptation strategy,
assuming good the application procedures all around, seem likely to be less
serious than those associated 'mapping', but perhaps marginally more serious
than with a simple 'adoption' strategy because of the adaptation to national
circumstances which is the point of the strategy. Included in the PHARE supported
seminars mentioned above has been a sequence of comparisons of tables with
statistics on employment by occupation and industry (major groups by tabulation
categories) from Labour Force Surveys for the participation countries. Assuming
(without evidence) that the ISIC, rev.3 implementations have been impeccable
these comparisons have suggested (i) that the initial national adaptations
of ISCO-88 contained significant differences in the understanding of ISCO-88
groups, as indicated by differences for particular tabulation categories in
the proportion of jobs classified to certain ISCO-88 major groups; and (ii)
that these differences have been significantly
reduced over the period of consultations represented by these seminars. See
e.g. Elias & Birch, 1996.

Updating ISCO-88: Issues and plans

When the
proposal for the conceptual framework for ISCO-88 was prepared one hoped that
stability in the classification=s basic structure and principles over a long
period would be one of the benefits, and that it would be possible to ensure
that occupational consequences of the continuous changes in technology and
work organisation could be accommodated through a process of up-dating within
and extension of the established structure. Unfortunately, systematic work
to up-date and extend ISCO-88 has been modest, even though the World Health
Organization has provided new descriptive definitions for the following groups
of nursing occupations: 223, 2230, 323, 3231, 3232 and 5133. In the future
these and other updated descriptions will be found on the ILO web-site as
they are being developed.

There are
two main reasons for the lack of progress in up-dating ISCO-88 so far: (i)
The limited resources devoted to ISCO-related work. With about one work-year
per year, divided between two persons, having been allocated to this work
in the ILO most of the efforts have had to be devoted to providing guidance
on understanding of ISCO-88, as well as on the development of NSOCs and on
their effective use to obtain reliable occupational statistics. (ii) As custodian
of ISCO-88 ILO is even further removed from the realities of the world of
work which the classification is supposed to reflect than are the custodians
of NSCOs . On a worldwide basis these realities are also much more varied
than those of a national labour market. Thus, even if ILO had allocated ample
human and financial resources for this work one would be faced with difficult
methodological issues: Where do we find relevant information, given that few
national custodians have established systematic procedures for updating their
NSCOs, and that those who have do not necessarily inform ILO about their activities
and findings? What are the criteria by which we can judge whether
a reported development is (sufficiently) significant and widespread to be
reflected in ISCO-88?. Do we need to make such judgements?

Current plans

In the face
of these problems the ILO's medium term strategy will continue to be one of
Amuddling" through on the basis of the following activities:

Collecting
information

We expect
that an ISCO-dedicated web-site, which we hope to establish before the end
of 2001 (already delayed by more than one year), will be our main channel
of communication with those who are closer than we are to the world of work.
The web-site will be used to display answers to queries on ISCO-88 and its
use, as well as proposals for up-dates and extensions. We hope to establish
hyper-links to similar web-sites for NSOCs.

However,
the experience since the adoption of ISCO-88 by the 14th ICLS seems to demonstrate
quite clearly that we at the ILO cannot expect much information to come our
way spontaneously. In this respect it will not help much to be able to receive
and disseminate information electronically more cheaply from/to a much wider
audience than in the past. Most of our correspondents will have to be reminded
about our existence and our needs. In connection with the establishment of
the ISCO web-site we therefore hope to send out a request for information
about the current situation with respect to (a) NSOC(s) to all national statistical
offices and employment services. In addition to asking for the co-ordinates
of the custodian(s) of the national classifications as well as whether the
NSOC represents an adoption or adaptation of a variant of ISCO, we will ask
for information about procedures and tools used for implementing the classification
in national data collection programmes and for ensuring that these tools and
the classification itself is regularly up-dated. Based on the information
received we hope to be able to establish a 'data-base on NSOCs in connection
with the ISCO web-site, and to be able to up-date this data-base regularly
through the information received later, either spontaneously or through reminders,
e.g. annually.

Forms of
up-dating of ISCO-88

As a result
of the information received a number of more detailed occupational classes
may be presented as subdivisions of appropriate ISCO-88 unit groups, with
a two digit "-xy" extension to the unit group code. Such extensions
will be proposed where it has been made clear that international exchange
of occupational information, including statistics, on these groups will warrant
their separate identification within the ISCO-88 structure. This may happen
e.g. (i) at the initiative of e.g. international federations of organizations
of people working in particular professions who can make a case for the separate
identification of these professions in ISCO-88 as important for the international
recognition of such occupations
(a proposal to create a group 2111-11 Medical Physicist is one example); (ii)
because new occupations have emerged as a consequence of technological developments
common to a number of countries; or (iii) because exchange of information
between several countries for e.g. recruitment, job placements and the international
migration of workers will be facilitated by references to detailed standard
occupational classes.

Regional
adaptations of ISCO-88 may introduce new unit and/or minor groups to the ISCO-88
structure, to bring together and highlight some important categories of occupations
which in ISCO-88 are "hidden" in one or more unit groups, or which
it is difficult to place within the ISCO-88 structure, see e.g. is the group
247 Public service administrative professionals created for ISCO-88(COM).

Procedures
for evaluating the relevance and significance of proposed up-dates to ISCO-88

On this very
important point we have not yet been able to come up with any proposals which
seems satisfactory. The best option may be to try to establish a network of
volunteer national 'specialists' who we can consult on specific proposals.
Available experience seems to indicate, however, that many such specialists
find it very difficult to evaluate proposals which do not correspond closely
to their national experience and procedures. It will therefore be necessary
to also make more use of regional workshops of the type organised by IER and
PHARE for transition countries in Central Europe. The difficulty will be to
ensure the necessary funding for such workshops around the world. It is encouraging
that the UN Statistics Division found funds to organize such workshops for
Asia and the Pacific and for the Caribbean (in 1999) and for English-using
Africa (in 2000) on classifications in general and ISIC, rev. 3 in particular,
but this does not provide a precedence which can be used to argue for workshops
on occupational classifications, unfortunately.

Concluding
remarks on plans for ISCO-88

The results
of the activities described above will be presented to the 17th International
Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS), tentatively scheduled for 2003-04,
with an invitation for the delegates to consider whether proposals for a comprehensive
revision of ISCO-88 should be prepared for discussion at the 18th ICLS in
2008-09. Obviously, all this will depend on whether a minimum of qualified
staff and other resources will be allocated to the relevant activities. We
are currently (May 2001) searching for qualified consultants to review relevant
experiences of both ESs and NSOs with NSOCs and similar instruments as basis
for preparing for the discussion of these issues at the 17th ICLS. Suggestions
will be gratefully received.

References

Chernyshev,
I., ed. (1994): Labour statistics for a market economy: Challenges and solutions
in the Transition Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet
Union. Central European University Press. Budapest, 1994.

Elias,
P. and M. Birch (1996): A comparative analysis of the structure of employment
by occupation and sectors of economic activity. Institute of Employment Research,
University of Warwick.

Elias,
P. & A. McKnight (2000): Skill Measurement in Official Statistics: recent
developments in the UK and the rest of Europe. Paper prepared for the International
Conference on 'Skills Measurement and Economic Analysis', 27-29 March 2000,
University of Kent at Canterbury. Institute of Employment Research, University
of Warwick, Coventry. March 2000.

Embury
B. et al (1997): Constructing a map of the world of work: How to develop the
structure and contents of a national standard classification of occupations.
STAT working paper 95/2. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1997.

Hoffmann,
E. (1994): "A Mapping a national classification of occupations into ISCO-88:
Outline of a strategy". Chapter 23 in Chernyshev (1994).

Hoffmann
E. et al (1995): What kind of work do you do? Data collection and processing
strategies when measuring "occupation" for statistical surveys and
administrative records. STAT working paper 95/1. International Labour Office,
Geneva, 1995.

Hoffmann,
E. (1999): "International Statistical Comparisons of Occupations and
Social Structures: Problems, Possibilities and the Role of ISCO-88".
on http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/papers/index.htm